Asia X Japan is forecasted to generate around $22 trillion of new financial wealth from 2020 to 2025. This is just slightly below to North America region around $25 trillion. The Chinese middle-class population is today larger than the entire US population. In India, we are seeing a massive expansion of wealth pools. Hong Kong is on track to becoming the largest cross-border finance center. It will be larger than Switzerland, which is today leading that. Singapore is currently the third-largest cross-border wealth hub, but is also the fastest-growing one. I could go on and on and on, but the message is very clear, the Asian wealth story is the most compelling opportunity in global wealth today and also in consumer banking… Wealth management is becoming by the day more and more international. Our customers leave, work, study and invest abroad. They demand from us many elements that go beyond just the traditional diversification portfolio that a global wealth manager delivers. They want us to, for example, allow them to place their wealth in any part of the world. They also want us to enable them to open an investment account or a current account in other parts of the world even before they land there, or they would like us to, for example, extend credit portability, even if they don’t have a credit score in a specific country.
Nuno Matos, Chief Executive, Wealth and Personal Banking, HSBC